1:29 Ante Meridiem
by wolfbadtreepretty
Summary: Jess Mariano learns how to change his life in the span of ten minutes.


__

__

**One Twenty-Nine Ante Meridiem**  
**Jess Mariano learns how to change his life in the span of ten minutes.**  
**The characters and world within do not belong to me.**

* * *

Jess watched her for a good long while after she had fallen asleep. One arm was in lazy protection over her breasts, keeping the sheet in an impressively PG orientation.

She was _beautiful_, glowing and vibrant with a smile tugging her lips into the smallest of curls.

He longed to touch her more. He did not just _want_ it, he truly _longed for it_. After all, this was the last place he expected to be athe looked at the alarm clock1:19 in the morning. He had thought that, at best, he would be speeding the highway to get as far away from her stinging rejection as he could.

Yet, the rejection had failed to come. It had threatened to, crept around the edges of his mind and wound its words around her tongue.

"Come away with me."

__

"I..." she had tried to start. "Jess..." She had stared at him, blue eyes helpless and full of something - pity, or possibly despair.

He had been clueless as how to react to that. He had expected a spitting refusal or a manic agreement. Anything in between, he had been entirely unprepared for.

Instead, she had been speechless, followed by excuses. The Dragonfly was test running soon, she had school, there was her mother to think about.

Before he could attempt to refute any one reason, she could pile on three more.

Then, her hand had been gripping the back of his neck and her arm had been around his shoulders and her lips had been fervent against his.

Being given time to think, while she slept with that smile on her face, he knew every right way to torture himself.

_She slept angelically. There was no way else to describe it: dark eyelashes resting against flushed cheeks, lips parted in a sleepy pink pout, hair spread around her head like a halo._

_He could touch her, so he did, and her eyes drifted open. Against his expectations, she smiled and reached to touch him, as well. She brought him to her and he did not resist, did not try to stop, did not refuse her lips or her skin or her form._

_The night was late, dim and spontaneous. They could, he hoped, make it last well into the bright morning before she would dispose of him._

_He hoped, and so he lost himself in her flesh and her eyes._

There is a thick moment and he recoils from her, sliding out of the bed. Nausea bites at his stomach and he blindly pulls for his jeans, shirt, and jacket. The jeans are easy, the shirt slightly less. He can get them on, but it takes almost a minute to locate the leather jacket and he has forgotten about socks.

"Where are you going?"

He turns and she is there, sitting in the bed with one hand pinning the sheet to her chest. There are so many things wrong, here, he realises.

"Jess?"

"Smoke," he says, lies. He is searching in his pockets for his cigarettes (keys) while he tries to shove his feet into sloppy boots. "I'll be right back."

She yawns and nods and burrows back into the covers. It makes him pause before he hurries out of the room and then the suite. The building, last of all.

He finds himself surprised to be lighting a cigarette on his way to the car.

"Pull it together, Mariano," he mutters, pulling open the driver's side door.

He does not bother to fasten his seatbelt, just shoves the key in the ignition and grinds the starter. This was a bad idea. He never should have come. He should have left as soon as he saw Dean, at her door, with her.

The radio blasts bad alternative over a peppery signal and he depresses the break long enough to take a pull on his cigarette.

"Fuck." He sighs. Turning off the ignition, he leans back heavily into his seat. He is a creature of habit, he knows. This is his habit: run. It is his heroin. He thinks that, perhaps, this makes her his methadone. The one other thing that satisfies the need for a fix.

He throws the cigarette onto the asphalt as he opens the car door.

The problem is this: Jess knows guys who have tried to get off heroin. He knows what happens: then they have to try getting off methadone. It reminds him of AA yuppies talking about getting past it, chain smoking Pall Malls and practically inserting an IV drip for their Columbian dark roast.

The thing is, though, that methadone and cigarettes and coffee are crap addictions.

As he reaches the building again, he builds the backbone into his theory: from running to Rory. That is a trade up in the addiction department.

In the suite, in her room, she spreads out on the bed, sleepily. Her eyes open briefly and she smiles at him. "Hey," she says before drifting entirely back to sleep.

"Hey," he whispers back, shucking his boots and his jacket, his jeans and shirt. When he climbs back into the bed, she moves against him and curls around him.

It is far from morning, not quite one-thirty, and the bed is not yet cold from where he was. He breathes her in, wrapping an arm around her.

He is taking the road he has less traveled, and it will make all the difference.

* * *

I tried to succeed at fluffy pathos with an element of bland sexuality (I'm complicated...). Whether or not I have succeeded, I would like to know. Feedback is greatly appreciated; critique doubly so.


End file.
